Apple will indeed have a number of mainstream musicians host shows on Beats 1 including Drake, Disclosure, St. Vincent, Josh Homme, Pharrell Williams, and Elton John, a report said on Thursday.

Disclosure

Some other people who will have shows include actor Jaden Smith, and Dr. Dre, one of the co-founders of Beats, the The New York Timessaid on Thursday. Beats 1 will alternate one- and two-hour programming blocks from the station's usual DJs -- during weekdays including Zane Lowe, Ebro Darden, and Julie Adenuga -- with the special celebrity shows, which will be both planned and hosted by the celebrities in question.

Most other programming details have yet to be made public, but John's show will be called "Elton John's Rocket Hour," and mix old and new music.

The station is also beginning to line up celebrity interviews. The first guest will be rapper Eminem, whose interview has already been recorded, despite Beats 1 not going live until Apple Music debuts on June 30.

Beats 1 is different approach to radio for Apple, which has had little success with the Pandora-like iTunes Radio. A modified version of that service will remain intact alongside Beats 1.

Apple Music itself will be an on-demand service, akin to Spotify or Rdio, costing $10 per month at the end of a three-month free trial. That trial has proven controversial, since Apple initially didn't intend to pay rights holders for streams during that period. It recently reversed course, and is now expected to pay 0.2 cents per song during trials, as well as an additional smaller fee for songwriting rights. A more conventional royalty structure will kick in after trials are finished.

I really hope this service works for Apple because it doesn't just sound like a Pandora clone; I hope they've done discreet public opinion research on this because it kinda sounds like an idea that a couple of Apple execs came up with at a cocktail party.

It would be cool to have a 24 hr. live stream (a la Periscope) from the DJ booths.

In fact, it wouldn't take much more of a leap of imagination to see Apple creating a range of Beats stations as MTV-style video channels on Apple TV.

There definitely will be more Beat stations. Why else would they have called it Beats 1. I love listening to the radio and I'd much rather pay than listen to endless commercials. Apple should include several talk radio stations, too, imo. They'd have to do very little work - just curate the thousands of podcasts. So many of them are fantastic but a lot of people are not organized enough to download and remember to play saved podcasts and instead just turn on the radio to see what is playing (.... note to self.. become more organized!)

its all about the communting experience. What do people LISTEN to when they communte 2-3 hours every day. You can't do video since that takes way to much data.

And stop comparing Sirus to AppleMusic. Sirus you have to WAIT to listen to what you want. With Apple its on DEMAND and you also get live content. I can see AppleMusic developing a ton of new stations that cover news, sports, entertainment, ect.

Sirus is old tech like FM/AM radio.

I was specifically comparing the celebrity shows to SiriusXM. Yes I know Apple has on demand streaming like Spotify, Rdio and Google Play Music.